Gryffindor and Slytherin
by meldahlie
Summary: "Were there such friends anywhere, as Slytherin and Gryffindor?" Just how big is a proper packed lunch? Can the new Transfiguration Professor swear in German? Why must 'Mother of the Bride' NEVER be mentioned? And is it possible to get over someone snapping and burning your wand? A post-DH sequel to "Blood Status."


Gryffindor and Slytherin

" _Were there such friends anywhere, as Slytherin and Gryffindor?"_

Just how big is a proper packed lunch? Can the new Transfiguration Professor swear in German? Why must 'Mother of the Bride' NEVER be mentioned? And is it possible to get over someone snapping and burning your wand?

A post-DH sequel to "Blood Status."

~:~:~

A/N: I found this yesterday. I presume I'd been saving it to post in September, but forgot :D.

A/N2: Sophia, you'll probably need to go and read 'Blood Status' first :)

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Gryffindor Tower

1st September 1998

Dear Diary,

It seems really odd to be sitting in a four-poster bed, writing a diary again. I did it every night, my first three years at Hogwarts, putting down all the things I'd have wanted to tell Mum or Dad or Julie. Everybody else in the dorm used to chat at bedtime, but I didn't have a friend like that, so I wrote my diary instead. Then last year, I didn't. We had to leave all our stuff behind, when Meck turned up for us. I grabbed Fifi, and Pam grabbed her coat, of all things, and it turned out afterwards that Meck went into Julie's bedroom and got Mum's jewellery box and the picture frame of Mum & Dad off the dressing table – and that was it. Whoever and whatever cleared out our flat, got the rest, including my diaries. I hope nobody read them. I don't want to think about bin men or Death Eaters going over how I felt homesick, that first term, and kept wishing Mum and Dad were still alive.

So I didn't have a diary, and I couldn't really have kept one anyway, not having to share the attic with Pam and Julie, and a double bed with Pam. I don't know that I'd have wanted to, anyway. I'd have felt too much like Anne Frank. But yesterday, at bedtime, Julie said I'd missed packing something – and gave me this diary. So I'm going to try and keep it again. But it seems a bit odd. Like none of last year happened, and yet it has.

(Natalie's just put her head through the curtains to see if I'm all right. That didn't used to happen. Now she's popped out again – I'll get to explaining Natalie in a minute.)

I'm glad Julie got the diary for me. Not Thaklia. Julie just got a nice ordinary diary, that I can write in whenever I please. If Thaklia had got it, I'd have felt obliged to write in it, and it would probably have been one of the fancy magical ones that writes back, and then I'd have felt it was sneaking off somehow to tell Thaklia what I'd written. She wouldn't have got me a packet of coloured biros either. I don't think she believes it possible to write with anything but a quill.

If I was writing a Topic Sentence for today, it would be 'Today has been rather strange.' I mean, living in hiding over the wand shop in Kentish Town was pretty strange, but we'd sort of got used to it. It felt funny to be getting up in a hurry, and eating an early breakfast, and knowing we were about to go out. We've been going in and out all summer, since the start of May, but not to catch an early train, and not with Thaklia and Julie both fussing and hurrying in their own different ways. It also seemed impossible to be going off to Hogwarts from anywhere other than our old flat. But we did get breakfasted eventually – and then we got changed. That seemed really odd, but Thaklia wasn't letting us out of the place without. Changing on the train, like writing with a biro, is not in her scheme of things, so we wore anoraks over our school robes. I felt horribly conspicuous at King's Cross, but Pam didn't seem to mind, and Thaklia is apparently oblivious to anyone staring.

Platform Nine and three-quarters hadn't changed, and we got all our stuff including Pam's owl on board in good time, and then stood there. It used to be just me, having butterflies-in-the-tum and saying good bye to Pam and Julie, but today Pam was coming with me – and Thaklia was there. That was what made it awkward, cause she'd only come because Pam had said she'd be a German _hausfrau_ if she stayed home and cleaned the flat instead. At least, that was what I thought, and I think that's what Julie thought. And then the whistle blew, and I hugged Julie and Pam hugged Julie and I was going to shake hands with Thaklia and thank her for having us for a year (Julie's moving into her new flat tomorrow) – but I didn't get a chance. She gave me a massive, fierce hug and Pam another one and told both of us to Take Care And Have A Nice Term.

Then she bundled us both onto the train and the whistle blew and we barely had time to wave to Julie before the Express rounded the corner. I didn't have any more time to wonder about Thaklia, 'cause Pam piped up. "I'm starving, can we eat?"

"That's lunch!" yelped I. "If you start now, there'll be nothing left by lunchtime!"

Pam shook her head. "If we start now and eat 'til lunchtime, there'll still be heaps left. If we ate 'til teatime, there'll still be some left!"

I think the latter was a bit of an exaggeration, but basically Pam was right. Thaklia had fixed our lunches (Julie suggested tuna-fish sandwiches and got squelched as 'inadequate') and it was TONNES. She's loaned us what I presume is her old school lunch box, since it has a silver plate with 'TDC' in swirly letters on it, and it seems to have some sort of interior expansion charm on it, cause she'd packed a lunch for 20. Two pork pies, not the ones from Tesco that are about three bites but big pork pies. Like soup bowl size, and groaning with filling. Then two packets of sandwiches, cheese and tomato and basil with what Thaklia calls proper (ie home-made) bread; two vast hunks of fruit cake; a whole tub of ginger-nuts; a dozen russet apples and then tucked in with the napkins – yup, napkins – was a twist of parchment enclosing ten sickles. _For sweets etc from trolley,_ Thaklia had written on the parchment.

"There's even knives and forks and plates," said Pam, after a thorough rummage.

"Well, you can't eat those," said I, pocketing the sickles before she tried to eat them. "Why don't we start with the ginger-nuts?"

We were part way through the tub when the compartment door flew open with a shriek. I mean, a shriek from the person opening it. "Sally Lowe! SAL-LEE LOWE!"

It must have been audible right along the carriage, if not the whole train, and for a moment I stood there (I'd jumped up at the shriek) just like someone out of a book and literally blinked.

Then the girl in the door flung herself into the compartment and hugged me. "You're alive!" she cried – zackly like someone out of a book. "Don't you remember me? Natalie MacDonald? We're dorm mates?"

Yes, I did remember her. No, I don't think I'd have recognised her the way she had me, but I was a bit too thrown by the second massive-and-unexpected-hug in a morning to manage to say so. And Natalie promptly ploughed on. "I thought you were dead! You stopped answering letters, and your sister was in the Prophet as convicted by – by – by _Them_ , and then I looked everywhere on the Platform and didn't see you!"

I'm making her sound silly or corny or something, writing this down. I can't quite capture just the way she said it. It wasn't silly or corny, it was like- ? Well, I know how she said it. Perhaps wailed would be a better word, but anyway. It suddenly made nine months in an attic in Kentish Town seem warm and safe and cosy, compared to what Hogwarts must have been like, that's left little clumps of people whispering together on the platform this morning. I hadn't thought about it before, really. It can't have been a bit nice to think your dorm-mates were dead, let alone murdered, and it was nice she remembered me. We used to get along OK; both her grans were muggle-born like me.

It would have been ghoulish to ask about her grans, so I hugged her back and passed her the tub of ginger-nuts. "Have a biscuit. And this is my little sister Pam."

Pam made a face at the 'little', but then she bowed just like Thaklia does and said "I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance."

I sniggered, and Little Miss Dignity vanished back into My Naughty Little Sister by putting her tongue out at me.

"I'm very pleased to make yours," said Natalie soothingly, "and they're awfully nice biscuits."

"Thaklia made them!" Pam announced, plopping back onto her seat as Natalie and I sat too.

It was a bit of a hassle trying to explain who Thaklia was, more so because Natalie asked if she was a House Elf and Pam laughed so hard she almost had hysterics and got really loud hurting hiccups instead. Eventually I managed to define her as Julie's boyfriend's big sister, which is true but sort of cuts out all the complicated bits that make Thaklia, Thaklia. I'll have to have a better go at explaining sometime when Pam isn't sitting there hiccing. We don't need another muddle like the one at Flourish and Blotts getting our books last week, where the shop assistant thought Thaklia was our mother! She was so, so mad about that. I suppose she still thinks of us as two hopeless muggles. Or maybe she just doesn't like to be reminded that she certainly is old enough to be so. At least Julie wasn't there too; she was collecting our new robes from Madam Malkin's. Thaklia is _almost_ old enough to be Julie and Meck's mother. I don't think she likes that fact either.

Anyway, it was properly lunchtime by the time we'd finished explaining, so we shared the picnic lunch with Natalie. It was just as well Thaklia had included the knives and forks, because it meant we could cut up the pies to share. Then Pam refused to go away and let Natalie and me talk in peace, so we got out our textbooks and revised Fourth Year Charms to bore her into going away. At first she sat there mocking and saying we couldn't stick it; then she really did get bored and flounced off. Natalie can't quite believe I knew all those charms. I think she'd got the idea of us trapped in a tiny little hole of an attic, doing nothing, not studying every day.

Okay, I was a bit surprised too at all I seemed to know. But my summoning charm is wobbly, even with being able to use my new wand since Christmas. Natalie noticed the wand. I explained quick that Meck's a wand-maker. She didn't ask how I'd lost my old one, and I didn't want to tell her. She probably thinks it was snapped, like Julie's. Well, it was, I know, just by Thaklia. That really doesn't seem as terrible now as it did then. And I know Thaklia did it for a good reason, but I don't think I could make anyone understand that and I'd rather not try.

It was dark as ever by the time we got to Hogwarts. Pam bounced back, and wanted to know if we'd revised our Potions too. She's longing to try brewing potions, cause Thaklia would only let her read the textbook. She – I mean Thaklia – said she'd had quite enough trouble with one idiot Gryffindor blowing up his cauldron. As in, Meck. Thaklia pretends to believe he'd have been a Gryffindor, though I'm sure she also firmly believes he'd have been a Slytherin, because all the Coburg-Drurys have been in Slytherin.

Perhaps Pam has picked it up from there, because with me in Gryffindor and Julie in Hufflepuff, she bounced up to the stool and the Hat when Professor Flitwick called "Lowe, Pamela!" and it dropped down to her ears and bellowed "SLYTHERIN!"

Natalie gave me a sympathetic hand-squeeze. I'm hoping Slytherin House is better than it used to be. But they've got Professor Slughorn now, and I do know there are nice Slytherins like Meck and Thaklia, so I'm truly hoping. I don't know what Thaklia will say. I think she'd sort of guessed that was where Pam would end up. Meck will just laugh and say Slytherin won't know what's hit it.

I am NOT going to worry about her. I'm going to worry about me, putting up with her swanking about it! I have to write to Julie and tell her in the morning. Eee-er! But I don't suppose Pam will.

(Natalie has just stuck her head through the curtains again to tell me it's ten past midnight. I said "That's OK, Legless doesn't come out 'til two." It was only when she looked completely gobsmacked I realised that didn't make any sense, outside Kentish Town. I've promised to explain, tomorrow,( I mean, later today) but I really, really have to go to sleep now!

~Sally.


End file.
